


Walk beside me

by flightinflame



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Childhood Trauma, Erik Lehnsherr Defense Squad, Gen, Hurt Erik Lehnsherr, Mind Control, Movie: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), Nina Lives, POV Child, Protective Charles Xavier, dadneto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25859644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame
Summary: Nina knows what dead is. She knows her Mama is dead, but her Papa isn't dead. He's something else, something strange, and it's scaring her.
Relationships: Nina Gurzsky & Charles Xavier, Nina Gurzsky & Erik Lehnsherr
Comments: 8
Kudos: 59





	Walk beside me

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Midrashic for betaing this, and Lynds and Triffidsandcuckoos for supporting me in writing it.  
> As this is set after Magda's death, there is mention of that, and of minor injury and threat to a child.

Nina knows what dead is. She's buried lots of her friends, with Papa's help, because they don't live long, or got sick, or others were hungry. She knows her mama is dead, because of the scary men, and she knows those scary men are dead too. She doesn't think Papa is dead, not exactly. But there's something very wrong, something like being dead. She doesn't like it.

She holds onto the edge of her papa’s coat, because he told her to stay close, but he also told her to keep her eyes closed and not to look. She doesn’t look, even when she hears her papa yelling, his voice angry, and hears other men scream. She keeps thinking of the forest, and Mama’s grave, and the flowers that the birds put on top when she asked them to.

She’s not sure Papa can see her. There’s more screaming, and her hand tightens on his coat. She’s been to where Papa works before, but that was fun. The men were nice, and there was a big old dog outside who she had played with. This time it isn’t nice at all. She whimpers to herself, but Papa doesn’t seem to hear, his hand gripping her shoulder and then stepping forwards, and she can hear talking but she doesn’t understand. It doesn’t make sense, because her papa doesn’t talk like that. She’s scared that this might all be her fault.

She knows she’s not meant to sneak out, but one of the deer had just had a baby and she had wanted to see. She’d been patting the tiny fawn, talking to them, promising to bring nice fresh fruit for them, when the men had appeared, and taken her, and then… they’d wanted to hurt her papa. And they had, they’d taken him away, made him like this, and they had killed her mama, and her arm stings from where an arrow had brushed it. Papa had bandaged it, but he hadn’t sung to her when he’d done it, and she wasn’t sure he’d seen her. She tries not to cry, wanting to know what's happening, but not wanting to open her eyes when she was told not to. She nuzzles against her papa’s leg, shaking, moving her injured hand up to her throat, to rest against her necklace, the one that Papa had used against the bad men.

“Papa?” she whispers. Her papa doesn’t reply. She screws her eyes up tighter. He leads her forwards, and there’s another voice now, and she wants to look. They step forwards, and she feels the wind on her. They’re outside.

She opens her eyes in confusion, and sees strange buildings, old - not ones near the factory. She hasn’t seen these buildings before. She tries to peek around Papa’s legs for a better look. There’s metal wire, and there aren’t any birds. 

There are two men and two women in funny clothes, and her papa pushes her behind him as one steps forwards, talking to him. He has a strange face, his skin blue, and his eyes unkind. She can’t understand - she knows the language, a little, but it doesn’t make sense, and nor does the sadness in Papa’s voice. Her papa is crying, and she can’t understand, because her papa is strong.

Papa kneels when the man pushes his hand down, and then… then things start to change. The pebbles shake, patterns on the ground, and she doesn’t know why, as the pebbles start to lift off, and then tiles peel from the roofs, and metal wire lifts into the sky. She finds herself hovering, just above the earth, in a little ball of air with pebbles floating around the outside, as the rocks and wire fly, and the man shouts, and her papa screams and cries. The air fills with what had been those buildings and her papa screams, and she stands in a bubble in the middle of it all, wanting to reach him. She tries to struggle but she can’t move. It’s like she’s been glued in place.

“Papa?” She calls out again, and the man with blue skin looks at her. She whimpers, pulling her jacket closer around her shoulders. She doesn’t like this man at all. She misses her Mama and she wants her papa to come back but he’s not there. He’s not there and she’s scared and she wants to cry, and whenever she’s scared Papa always hugs her, always makes it okay. But Papa isn’t hugging her now.

Papa doesn’t hug her until they’re in another building, and the blue man is talking to the boy with bird wings, and her papa steps away, talking quietly. She hears him asking for help. There’s no one there, no one but her, so she tries to help, trying to sing the song that her papa sings to help her sleep. Her voice is shaky, but she tries. 

The blue man walks closer, and she’s scared, clutching Papa’s hand, and he pushes her away. He pushes her and the girl with white hair wraps her arms around Nina, and then there’s a voice in her head, and it isn’t a voice she knows at all. She clutches her hand, feeling very small.

They move again. A blue hallway, and Papa lifts his hand up, and a man sitting in a chair comes towards them, and the boy with bird-wings protects him, and then they disappear again, somewhere new.

The man in the chair is asleep. She looks at him curiously. She has decided she doesn't like the blue man at all, and her papa is sick, and the boy with the wings and the woman with purple hair don't seem to know she's there. The girl with the white hair was gentle, but she's not helping her now.

Nina feels very very alone, and she thinks the man in the chair might feel alone too, so she moves closer. She follows her papa into another purple glowing shape, because she has to stick with him, even if he doesn't know it. She watches as Papa lifts the man from the chair, carrying him as gently as he'd always carry her when he put her to bed. She watches as she puts him on the stone ground, and puts a jacket beneath his head. She sits on a rock, swinging her legs and trying to hum to herself, to try and be brave, even though she wants her mama and she wants her papa back.

The blue man walks over to the man that was in the chair, and they talk. She can't make sense of what it is he means, about "glory" and gifts and control. But then the man who was in the chair turns to her papa.

"Are you going to take part in all this killing?" he asks, and she wants to scream that her papa won't. That her papa would never ever hurt anyone. But she knows what happened to the scary men. 

"It's all I've ever known," Papa answers, and she does start to cry then, because somehow Papa has forgotten her, and Mama, and playing in the forest and picking her up and spinning her in the air until she giggled.

"No it isn't. You've just forgotten," the man that was in the chair says, and he looks towards her and smiles a little. She smiles back, through the tears, hoping it'll be okay. And then Papa answers him.

"Charles, I remember, your way doesn't work." Papa said, and Nina knows that it's going to be okay, because Charles was Papa's friend, and Charles would fix things, because he was clever and kind and Papa said if anything ever happened to him, Charles would look after her.

The blue man says he'd made things better, but the man who was in the chair - Charles - told Papa he was good. And as he said it, she slipped down from the rock, because she could feel Charles talking in her mind.

_"It's okay, little one. Stick close to me, I'll try and keep you safe..."_

She crosses to curl up at his side, watching a small scorpion run across the rock. He strokes her hair gently, shushing her. _"I need you to be quiet now, okay little one? I'm going to try to hide you."_

 _"Can you help my papa?"_ She thinks, and a look of pain flickers across his face.

 _"I'm going to try."_ Charles promises. 

Papa looks, and for a moment he seems to see her, and then he doesn't see her again. "Whatever you think you saw in me, Charles, I buried it with my parents and my wife."

Nina trembles, and the arm that Charles has got around her tightens.

The blue man approaches, leaning over Charles. "Charles, you will send a message to every living mind. You will tell them that this Earth will be laid waste. That it is I, En Sabah Nur, who wreak this upon them. Now. Deliver my message." The blue man looks at Nina when he speaks, and she feels scared, hiding her face in Charles's shoulder.

"Even if I wanted to, I couldn't reach that many people," Charles is arguing, but he's talking in her mind at the same moment. _"I'm sorry Nina, I don't want to hurt you, but I'm not strong enough for what he's asking."_

She whimpers, and she can hear the man saying something about her back and Charles's funny chair that he uses to get around. She doesn't understand, but a moment later Charles nods and begins to speak. He says what the blue man tells him to, and the words echo in her mind as they are spoken. 

"Hear me, inhabitants of this world. This is a message to every man, woman and mutant. You have lost your way, but I have returned. The day of reckoning is here. All your buildings and temples will fall. The dawn of a new era will emerge. For there is nothing you can do. This message is for one reason alone. To tell the strongest among you, those with the greatest power..." The voice shakes, and she feels the man's mind wrap around her like an embrace, and now he doesn't say what he's told to. _"I'm sorry, Nina."_ "Protect those without." He glares up at the blue man fiercely. "That's my message to the world." His arms tighten around Nina as he says it, and she sniffles against his chest.

The scorpion has wandered closer now, and so she lets it climb onto her hand. She focuses on that, watches it crawl up her arm. 

The blue man is talking to her papa, and he gives him a strange hat. Her papa puts it on, and she feels Charles shaking in her embrace. "Wipe clean this world," the blue man tells her papa, and Papa flies up into the air, calling up the pebbles like he had before, but this time there's no bubble around her, and one hits against her leg.

"And me?" Charles asks, staring up at him with hatred and anger. "And her? Are we to play a role in this madness?"

The blue man smiles at Charles, and nods. She feels scared.

"Stay close," Charles tells her. "I'm going to try and get help. Stay with me."

She nods. She doesn't want to leave her papa, but she is scared. The city in front of her changes, and Charles is crying now, as something big soars up ahead of them, and she can't feel any sign of life down there. She can always feel birds, and animals, foxes and rabbits or deer... there's always something. There's nothing here.

The blue man and the winged boy take them up into the big building. It's bigger than anything she's seen before, bigger even than the warehouses that were used to build weapons a really long time ago, when there had been a big war.

The blue man takes Charles over to a table, sticking him on it, and wrapping sand around his wrists, and Charles doesn't try and wriggle his legs away.

There are no animals in this building either, and that's not right, she can't even feel mice or insects, spiders even. There's just this building, and as she watches golden lines start to run down from the ceiling to the floor. She's scared but she doesn't know where to go.

 _"Stay near me Nina. It's going to be alright. I'm here, just stay close, okay?"_ He sounds so certain that things would be alright that she believes him. He keeps saying that, even as he wriggles on the table like a fish that has jumped out of the water. She wants to fight, and she knows that she was able to help Papa with the scary men with birds but there are no birds here, and even if there were the blue man is just too powerful, he'd hurt her friends. 

The blue man pats her hair, and she wants to cry, but Charles is still talking to her, telling her it's okay. The blue man lays down on another thing, like Charles is lying on, and when she next hears Charles's voice in her head he sounds scared. _"Help is coming, Nina. It's going to be okay. Just stay out of his way, alright, it's going to be-"_

Charles is screaming on the table, wriggling and thrashing and then... then he disappears, and in his place is a cloud of black smoke. A moment later, arms wrap around her, and the air seems to spin, and then she sees Charles.

She rushes to him, wraps her arms around his shoulders, when a woman who reminds her of her mama guides her back a little bit.

"Hello, it's... you're young... just stay out of the way."

"Is Charles alright?" she asks, scared for her friend, and after a moment the woman nodded. 

"We're going to try and help him. I'm Moira, what's your name?"

"Nina. My papa is down there, can you help him?" She reaches out, tapping her fingers against the top of Charles's head, because his hair has all disappeared.

She hears a loud noise, and sees a new blue boy. She ducks away from him, but he smiles at her, raising one strange hand, and then disappearing again.

"He's a friend," Moira tells her. "He saved you."

When the boy reappears, she smiles at him, and then smiles at the other person he brought back. She's still scared for her papa though. "Can you get my papa? He's acting strange, I think he might be sick?"

The blue boy returns, with a man with blue fur, and then something goes wrong and there are loud noises, and a girl with pretty red hair is speaking.

"Everyone grab hold of Nightcrawler."

She doesn't know what a Nightcrawler is, but Moira pulls her close, and she reaches out to wrap her hand around one of the strange blue boy's fingers. The world dissolves into smoke, and for a few seconds she can just feel the world kind of fizzing, seeing a room and the plane at the same moment, and then... then they are in a room, and Charles is struggling, trying to push them away, screaming for them to get out.

She tries to grab him, as the girl with pretty red hair crouches beside him. "Professor, it's okay, you're with us. It's okay."

Slowly Charles calms down, and she curls up beside him, crying softly. 

"Can you help Papa, Charles?"

"I don't know, I'm sorry," he answers, patting her hair. "It'll be okay, but I can't sort it out yet."

"But Papa is ill. And he said... he said you can help." She pleads, and Charles lets out a broken little gasp. There's yelling outside, and she's scared, because it all sounds angry and frightening, and her papa is out there and there's something wrong, something really wrong.

Everything feels too big and too much, and she starts to sob. She wants her mama and her papa and she wants to be home, and none of that is happening and she is so scared.

Moira pats her hair, and there is quiet for a moment between them. Outside, someone screams. Charles whimpers, and she curls up against him as the blue man asks Charles to come forwards. Moira says not to.

The scorpion, which had been hiding in her jacket sleeve, climbs out onto her shoulder. She whispers gently to her, telling her that it is all going to be okay, because she thinks the scorpion might be scared. Charles is crying, wiggling on the floor, and the blue boy is asleep, and Nina looks up at Moira, hoping she would help.

The wall of the house they are in peels away, and she can see her papa still there, surrounded by metal and rocks, and then Charles screams.

Something jumps through the air, making the room shake. A big piece of metal, bigger even than the one Papa had used to make her a swingset. A moment later, there’s another bit, making a giant cross in the air. She scurries forwards, on her hands and knees so she doesn’t fall over the edge. 

Her papa is floating in the air above them, and he’s angry, but it doesn’t… it doesn’t feel like he’s angry at her, Papa would never be this angry at her. It feels like when she found a small kitten caught in a trap, half-starved, and Papa had been angry at whoever had set the trap, had let her bring the kitten home and help her recover. It doesn’t feel like he’s mad at her, but it’s not like he was at work either. 

“Papa?” She calls out, trying to crawl closer to the edge. “Papa?”

The lady, Moira, grabs her shoulder and pushes her backwards, putting her under the table. She nearly puts her hand on the scorpion, but doesn’t. Nina gathers the scorpion against her chest.

“Stay down, Nina.” Moira tells her. She sits under the table, looking over at Charles who keeps shouting. She’s scared. The scorpion settles against her shoulder. The table she’s hiding beneath crumbles to dust, and Moira pulls her close, wrapping her arms around her. It feels like Mama cuddling her, stroking her hair and saying nice things, but Mama doesn’t smell the same, Mama had a different perfume and she misses her mama, and she wants to cry.

Moira keeps cuddling her. “It’s okay, Nina, it’s okay. Don’t look,” Moira tells her, and she thinks of the forest and the scary men and her mama. She wants to cry. 

She can hear explosions and crashes, but she presses her face against Moira’s shoulder, trying to make the noises all go away.

And then there’s a bright light, brighter than the time she looked at the sun, and her eyes are full of little fizzly dots, and she can’t see but Moira is stroking her hair, making soft soothing noises that she doesn’t really understand.

She blinks hard, and the dots dance in front of her eyes and she sniffles softly. She thinks of the way her mother always told her that she could find the people she loved in the shining of the sun, and wonders if it is Mama coming to protect her because she is scared. Slowly, the light fades away, and Moira is still patting her hair, and she misses her mama. Moira lets go of her.

“Nina, you stay with Kurt,” she says. Nina blinks, not knowing who Kurt is, but then she points to Nightcrawler instead. Nina sits there, watching Moira do something with Charles, pressing at his chest and trying to kiss him, but Charles doesn’t do anything. And then the girl with pretty hair comes back, and so does the blue fluffy man, and Charles opens his eyes, reaching up to Moira, and Nina looks away. She’s not sure if Moira and Charles are going to kiss, and kissing is gross.

She watches her scorpion walk in circles across the floor, and carefully sneaks over to the edge, looking down. Her papa looks up at her, and she thinks that now he sees her. He takes a deep breath, and then he’s flying up into the air again, landing on the edge of the room. She rushes forwards and wraps her arms around him, and he pulls her close. The girl with white hair appears as well, but Nina focuses on cuddling her papa.

“Nina,” he murmurs, and she knows now that he’s back. “I’m sorry, I am so sorry…”

“Papa?” She looks up at him. “You… you came back? I… I was scared…”

“I’m here now.” He promises, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Nina. You are… you will always be my priority, I don’t… I’m sorry….” He is rubbing her back, and she clutches him tightly.

“I knew Charles was going to help us,” she reassures him, and he swings her up onto his hip, stroking her hair. “Papa? Are you okay now?”

He presses a kiss to her hair. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, sweetie. I should have been there for you, and I wasn’t, but I’m here now…” He clears his throat, carrying her over to where Charles was sitting. “Thank you for looking after her, Charles. I didn’t… I didn’t know… I was hurting, and he… he was in my mind, and I didn’t know what was going on. But you kept her safe, thank you.” 

Nina smiles up at her papa, and at Charles. Charles sits up. 

“Shall we go home?”

Moira pulls a funny face, and shakes her head, and the blue man rests a big hand on Charles’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is nice and growly. “The house was destroyed. Peter saved almost everyone-”

“Who didn’t-”

“Alex.” The blue man says, and Charles looks very sad, and so does Papa. She leans over and tries to hug both of them at once.

“I’m sorry, Scott.” Charles says, and clears his throat. “We’ll see what we can do to rebuild. We will be stronger…” He pauses, and looks at her papa. “Erik, do you want to come with us?”

“Charles?”

“I can give you and Nina a home. And… after everything… I would feel better if I knew you were safe.”

“I come too.” The girl with white hair pushes forwards, and smiles nervously. “If that is allowed. I come with you as well.”

Nina nods. “Please, Papa. She was nice to me.”

Charles nods as well, reaching out to hold Papa’s hand. “You can both come. My goal has always been to provide a home for all mutants. And the two of you helped us.” Charles smiles. “Nina, do you want to come with us?”

“Is that man gone? The blue one?”

“He’s gone,” Charles promises. “He isn’t ever going to get to hurt anyone, and you helped, Nina, because you were so brave.”

Nina smiles, and clings to her papa, and he keeps patting her, cuddling her close. 

“I was scared you weren’t going to come back, Papa.”

“I know, I’m sorry Nina. I’m here now. I love you, and you were so brave…” He presses a kiss to her forehead again, and she sniffles against him. Her papa starts to sing her the lullaby, and she nuzzles against his chest. Papa is here, and even if she is scared, she can trust that things are going to be okay. She yawns, and smiles. 

“Papa, I’ve got a scorpion. She can stay, can’t she?”

“I’m sure she can,” Papa promises, and he hugs her tight. She feels very sleepy, now that she knows her papa is here and safe. She yawns, falling asleep in her papa’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've enjoyed please leave a comment! Thank you for reading


End file.
